Boxer Shorts

Princeton University students, heeding warnings from university officials that streakers would be suspended for a year, refrained from romping in the buff to celebrate the season's first snowfall--an annual event that had come to be known as the "Nude Olympics." Only a few students clad in boxer shorts and T-shirts ventured outside into the 25-degree chill Thursday to carry on a semblance of the tradition. The Nude Olympics tradition began in the 1970s.

Saying he wanted to be "at one with the monkeys," a man stripped down to his boxer shorts, scaled a high fence and jumped into the Bronx Zoo's gorilla exhibit, police said. A quick-thinking zoo employee was able to herd the gorillas into their feeding cages before the man, identified as 32-year-old Peter Vetique, could come near them. "There was no physical contact between the two species," said Sgt. Andrew McInnis, a police spokesman.

Supermodel Naomi Campbell was all smiles when she turned up unexpectedly on the Dolce & Gabbana catwalk, a day after her much publicized sentencing on charges of "air rage." We call it unexpected because it was men's fashion week, after all. The lone female in this show, the former Victoria's Secret model appeared toward the end in a black bra, a pair of boxer shorts and black-and-white Japanese print bathrobe, while music from N.E.R.D. blared. Was it an attempt to immediately rehab her image?

Sheriff's officials were still searching Thursday for two of four inmates who escaped from the Theo Lacy Branch Jail, a medium-security lockup, Wednesday night. The two escapees were identified as Casimiro Sanchez, 40, and Jose Cruz, 22. Sanchez is described as 5 feet, 7 inches tall, weighing 150 pounds, and having black hair and brown eyes. Cruz is 5 feet, 9 inches tall, weighs 200 pounds, and also has black hair and brown eyes.

Ashley Bryan lies down on the dirty carpet of her dad's bedroom where she usually sleeps. The 10-year-old girl closes her eyes, clasps her hands and raises them to her lips. Firmly, fervently, she prays. She wishes not for a bike or Barbie like most kids her age, or to become a doctor or firefighter some day. Every night, Ashley asks for something she believes only God can deliver. She prays for a new father.

November 27, 1994 | Bernard Cooper, Los Angeles writer Bernard Cooper is a frequent contributer to Harper's. His last two books are "Maps to Anywhere," from the University of Georgia Press, and "A Year in Rhymes" published by Viking

I loved the restaurant's name, a compact curve of a word. Its sign, five big letters rimmed in neon, hovered above the roof. I almost never saw the sign with its neon lit; my parents took me there for early summer dinners, and even by the time we left--father cleaning his teeth with a toothpick, mother carrying steak bones in a doggie-bag--the sky was still bright. Heat rippled off the cars parked along Hollywood Boulevard, the asphalt gummy from hours of sun.

One of the most amazing illusions in "Forrest Gump," a movie chock-full of special effects that opened Wednesday, has nothing to do with old newsreel footage--but with Gary Sinise playing a Vietnam veteran with both legs amputated. Sinise, 39, who has both legs, surprised even himself with his performance as Lt. Dan, a cocky Army officer who is wounded in the Vietnam War, losing both legs.

The county coroner's office is asking for the public's help in identifying a man who killed himself at a park in July. The man was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head on a park bench at the Granada Hills Recreation Center shortly after 7 a.m. on July 19, said Scott Carrier, a spokesman for the coroner's office. The park is at 16730 Chatsworth St. The man was white or Latino, about 30, 6 feet tall and 246 pounds, Carrier said.